Lee’s Journey

It bothers me that I have to start out with this, but I am not connected to the medical field in any way. I am just an individual fed up with the health situation I got myself into, and went on a mission to change it all.

One of the things that has become abundantly clear is that most of us don’t take nutrition, exercise and weight control seriously until all of our bad habits manifest themselves into some serious medical problems. This hit home when I started talking to younger relatives about nutrition. I am 69 years old. Had I got the same speeches in my thirties, forties and fifties, I would have ignored the advice and been irritated at the intervention. I was indestructible back the and was going to live forever as I suspect is mostly human nature at that age. And so it goes, none of the younger friends and relatives are going to change. McDonalds is their go-to. They, like the younger me, are supermen and superwomen who nothing bad can happen to.

I was much luckier than Carl.

Purely by accident I landed a doctor who’s specialty was diabetes. I did not know that when I first started seeing him. To me he was just a good general practitioner.

In February of 2011 I went in for my yearly physical. The doctor went over the results of my blood test I had done the week before and announced “You have diabetes”. Looking at the print out I argued “my fasting glucose was only 106, that’s not diabetes”. He pointed to the A1C of 6.9, That is the indicator, not your fasting blood sugar. I had never heard of A1C.

He prescribed 1000mg of metformin twice a day and sure enough my fasting blood sugar went to 100 and the A1C started hovering around 6.1.

By the time the third year rolled around, I was on blood pressure meds, cholesterol meds, and five other meds to control depression, heartburn and prostate problems.

In 2014 Carl had a heart attack. That was a wakeup call for both of us. As we struggled to understand our situation Carl came across a book by Penn Jillette of the Penn and Teller fame. The book was "Presto" and described his 100 pound weight loss on the potato diet. He tried it and it worked. He explained it to me and I read the book and started it. Two weeks later deep into research I ran across a study that said that a Mock Fasting Diet (MFD) done on a specific schedule could control diabetes, and possibly cure it (more on both of these regimens in subsequent articles). I passed that study on to Carl and we both got a lot more intense on our research, reading every study and every doctor’s opinion we could find. It became crystal clear that everything bad that has happened to us, and any future health problems were directly tied to – guess what – diet and exercise. Not just any diet, but a specific regimen – Health was controlled by your gut. After the first two weeks, we modified the potato diet to meet the requirements of the MFD.

In September of 2016 I buckled down and reset my eating habits, beginning with the Penn's potato diet and then modifying it to fit the recommended MFD. As I started eating what I was supposed to and doing a 2 mile walk three times a week, My fasting blood sugars taken every morning fell below 100 and have mostly remained there.

On June 20, 2017 I met with my doctor for my annual physical. He came into the room and shook my hand, “congratulations!”. We sat down and went over the results together. I had lost 65 pounds, my fasting blood glucose was at 93 and my A1C was at 5.6 for the first time in many years. He took me off all meds except prostrate.

There are many things I am thankful for , That I had the right doctor at the right time, that I had the tenacity and will power to do what needed to be done, and that I had Carl not only as a fellow researcher, but that his journey demonstrated where mine might have gone.

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